The Book of Secrets Read Online Free Page B

something of a student of African tribes, hence his sympathy for me. He had just returned from a field safari in Giriyama. I must say I was not a little disappointed. In Africa one does not expect to be saddled with overseeing Indians. These, I am told, already have a conflict under way with local missionaries. Nevertheless I was eager to get away. And so, after yet another dinner party and dancing at the Grand Hotel (grand in name only, as everyone here hastily explains — but the Club is no good for such events, as it is out of bounds to women after 7 P.M. ) and a picnic lunch the following morning with a charming couple called the Unsworths, I set off on the Uganda Railway for Voi.
    I had resolved to catch up on duty, to write letters to Mother and Robert, but as soon as I sat down with paper and pen I realized how futile it was to attempt that mundane chore, to conjure up England out of a night in Africa. The darkest, blackest night that simply shut out the world of European Mombasa. From where I sat contemplating my epistolary failure, the window of the Uganda Railway coach sent back an eerie reflection of myself. I pressed my face to the pane and watched the darkness fly past … shadows in the moonlight swiftly rushing by, shadows that could be trees or some species of wildlife.… It was impossible to surrender to sleep with the knowledge that finally I was entering the interior of Africa … the huge and dark continent that had defied the rest of the world for millennia, now opening up to European civilization, to a great Empire of which I was a minor but privileged functionary. “Life and soul,” Mr. Churchill had said. My body had blistered in the heat and swelled to the bites of insects, and as I lay on the most uncomfortable bunk the Uganda Railway possessed, my soul was stirring.
    19 March
    Thirty porters were engaged for me at Voi, from where I set off this morning after spending two nights at the Dak bungalow. There has been much singing and merriment. The porters are of the Wataita tribe and speak a little Swahili. They wear a strip of cloth around their waist. Their front teeth are sharpened to a point, and some carry objects such as tin boxes or small animal horns in the slits in their ears. With me is Thomas, who was the first person to welcome me in Africa and has doggedly stayed with me, willing to serve me for anything I can pay him. He has told me an interesting story of how a woman from his people was once Queen of Mombasa for a very short period during Portuguese times. Thus the vanquished clutch at straws of glory.… He has a rather irritating habit of equating his status with mine, and never tires of pointing out the shortcomings of the poor Wataita. He doesn’t realize that they all have fun at his expense.
    Part of our way is thick, thorny bramble, which we have to cut through. I am utterly in the hands of the porters and guides. What do they think of me? I feel strange and nervous, helpless with the smattering of Swahili I picked up in Mombasa. Sometimes I am the subject of their song, but whether they ply me with compliment or abuse I cannot say. Baboons chatter in the trees above us,rhino spoor has been pointed out to me, I have seen a snake cross my path. At one time we were followed by lion grunts, and even now in the dark night perhaps I hear them growl. I am reminded of the lion head at the Mombasa Club and the red-fezzed Captain Maynard sitting under it. I cannot help thinking that if the blacks in my caravan decide to butcher me and my Indian, it would be Maynard or someone like him who would be sent to avenge us.

2
    Kikono, “The Little Hand,” lay some thirty miles from the border with German East Africa, a convenient stop on the east-west trail from Voi to Moshi that connected the two colonies. The mighty snow-capped Kilimanjaro attended by fluffs of cloud loomed in the near distance: a presence at once enigmatic, benign, and mystical; a symbol of the eternal. But the